The Only Way is
... Pocklington!

A SMASH hit television series has boosted a Pocklington fashion designer’s profile after her clothes graced the stars of The Only Way is Essex.

The ITV show, known as ‘Towie’, regularly attracts over one million viewers and has even spawned its own unique catchphrases and words such as ‘Reem’ and ‘Jel’ which have become part of mainstream vocabulary for many fans of the show.

Billie Faiers

Fashion designer Nicola Scott, who owns and runs the Bunty and Co clothes shop in Pocklington, has benefited from the success of the programme after some of its female stars were snapped wearing her designs.

Nicola was then asked to supply the Minnie’s Boutique shop run by stars of the show, sisters Sam and Billie Faiers, which was swarmed by hundreds of shoppers at its opening last year.

She was later commissioned by the Faiers’ to design exclusive items for Minnie’s Boutique, including a cropped sweater bearing the word ‘Brentwood’ and another top featuring one of the show’s most famous catchphrases ‘Shut up!’.

Other celebrities such as Kelly Brook and Strictly Come Dancing’s Ola Jordan have also requested Bunty and Co clothes, as has WAG and glamour model Nicola McClean who asked for some to take into the Celebrity Big Brother house.

For Nicola, who studied fashion in Leeds and opened her shop in Pocklington almost six years ago, it is a major boon to see her designs on national television and in celebrity magazines,

“It’s really taken off in the last year or so,” she said. “It all started when Lauren Pope from the show wore one of my designs.

“Since then, the Towie connection has really helped because it’s such a popular programme, the number of our Facebook friends doubled in six months.

“I do feel chuffed when I see my designs on the television, and since Minnie’s Boutique opened on the show, there are quite a lot of scenes where they’ll be folding clothes and I’ll see that it’s items they’ve got from us, which always feels good.”

Nicola now supplies around 30 shops across the country but still manages to run her own boutique full-time in Pocklington’s Market Place.

“I love being in the shop and dealing with customers, it’s what I really enjoy,” she said.

“But the clothing range is where there is room to really take it further.

“I get phone calls from all over the place from people asking about the range so there is a demand out there for it.”

In light of the Towie boost, Nicola is now planning to reintroduce the sales page on her website so that customers from anywhere in the country can log on to buy clothes online.

“We had to close down that side of it because it was just taking too much time with everything else going on, but it’s something that we want to get back into so watch this space!” said Nicola.

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